From the Wikipedia article on library science…

Thomas Jefferson, whose library at Monticello consisted of thousands of books, devised a classification system inspired by the Baconian method, which grouped books more or less by subject rather than alphabetically, as it was previously done. Jefferson’s collection became the nucleus of the first national collection of the United States when it was transferred to Congress after a fire destroyed the Congressional Library during the War of 1812. The Jefferson collection was the start of what we now know as the Library of Congress.

Yet another cool thing that Thomas Jefferson did.  It’s a pity more people don’t know this odd little fact.

From the Wikipedia article on the Libary of Congress…

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and holds the largest number of books. The head of the Library is the Librarian of Congress, currently James H. Billington.

The Library of Congress was established by Congress in 1800, and was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century. After much of the original collection had been destroyed during the War of 1812, Thomas Jefferson sold 6487 books, his entire personal collection, to the library in 1815.^[2][3] After a period of decline during the mid-19th century the Library of Congress began to grow rapidly in both size and importance after the American Civil War, culminating in the construction of a separate library building and the transference of all copyright deposit holdings to the Library. During the rapid expansion of the 20th century the Library of Congress assumed a preeminent public role, becoming a “library of last resort” and expanding its mission for the benefit of scholars and the American people.

The Library’s primary mission is researching inquiries made by members of Congress through the Congressional Research Service; although it is open to the public, only legislators, Supreme Court justices and other high-ranking government officials may check out books.

The Library of Congress is one of those places that I have never had a chance to visit, but it is on the list of top five places I want to visit.

From the Wikipedia article on Mundy…

Born in London, at age 16 he ran away from home and began an odyssey in India, Africa, and other parts of the Near and Far East. By age 29, he had begun using the name Talbot Mundy, and a year later arrived in the United States, starting his writing career in 1911.

His first published work was the short story “Pig-Sticking in India”, which describes a popular, though now outlawed, sport practiced by British forces. Mundy went on to become a regular contributor to the pulp magazines, especially Adventure and Argosy .^[1]

Many of his novels, including his first novel Rung Ho!, and his most famous work King of the Khyber Rifles, are set in India under British Occupation in which the loyal British officers encounter ancient Indian mysticism. The novels portray the citizens of Imperial India as enigmatic, romantic and powerful. His British characters have many encounters with the mysterious Thugee Cults. The long buildup to the introduction of his Indian Princess Yasmini and the scenes among the outlaws in the Khinjan Caves clearly influenced fantasy writers Robert E. Howard and Leigh Brackett. Other science-fiction and fantasy writers who cited Mundy as an influence included Robert A. Heinlein, E. Hoffmann Price, Fritz Leiber^[2], Andre Norton ^[3], H. Warner Munn, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Daniel Easterman. ^[4] James Hilton‘s novel Lost Horizon was partly inspired by Mundy’s work. ^[5]

I can really see the similarity between Mundy’s writing style and Robert E. Howard’s (of Conan fame).  Which leads me to point out that Robert E. Howard was a good friend of H.P. Lovecraft, and I really believe those of you who are Lovecraft fans would adore the work of Mundy.  (If you don’t already that is.)   

[Side note: This post was composed froma mobile device.  So my writing style is going to be a bit foggy.  Sorry about that.]

As with online book reviews that link to an online retailer (with affiliate fees), there is no reason an ebook about, say, rugby shouldn’t link to somewhere where I can buy tickets for the World Cup. If it’s a proper ebook – I mean, not just a book I can read on a digital device, but a proper ebook that is cloud-based and dynamically updated – then the link/interaction will point to 2011 tickets today, and in 4 years it will point to 2015 World Cup tickets. If I am reading about knitting I may well want to buy needles, and there’s no reason an ebook that makes me want to buy knitting needles shouldn’t help me do that (and make some money for the publisher, as well as the needle-maker, in the mean time).

“Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to do. The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.”

I think this is totally true.  That is all.

(For those who care: Mr. Bezos was talking about the new Kindle on Charlie Rose‘s show when he said this.)

Today I read a wonderful post over at INDX//mb.  The post states:

I have been trying to decide who I should link to when I link to books — Wikipedia? Kobo? Google? Who links where reminds me of what a powerhouse Amazon’s affiliate program is. I wonder if their first mover advantage is insurmountable? It seems so. No other retailer is even trying to build inbound links from across the web. And if a new entrant needs 10x the money and effort to unseat the incumbent, then the B&Ns, Indigos, and Borders of this world can’t afford it.

As a reader who blogs, this question resonated with me.  Most the time when I’m talking about a book I link to Amazon, and when I’m talking about a writer I link to Wikipedia.  But is there a better source of information about books / authors?  Later on in the same INDEX//mb post this appears:

Which brings me to The Open Library. There stated mission is “One web page for every book.” I am keen to link to TOL and I am eager to contribute edits where I can. The problem I have with it is the lack of a canonical page for the work rather than the book or the edition… For now, and perhaps forever, I will be linking to the best attempt at the canonical page on the net, at LibraryThing.com. (I just wish they added a TOL-style wiki.)

I spent some time poking around The Open Library site, and I’m kind of fascinated by it.

~2~

The second item I wanted to call some attention to is a post over at the O’Reilly Tools Of Change blog about something that I think is a bit of very exciting technology created by a company called Ricoh Innovations.  The post states:

How It Works
According to Jamey Graham, Distinguished Research Engineer at Ricoh, RI’s technology is similar to that of QR codes, but uses the natural patterns of an object or a page as opposed to a barcode. “Over the last few years we’ve developed algorithms for indexing & recognizing visual patterns. Using an Android or iPhone device, readers can snap a picture of a region on the page (text or images, or a combination) and they will be presented with online material just as if they’d scanned a barcode.”

With RI’s visual search system, areas of a page are mapped and linked to corresponding content. RI has developed both cloud and mobile versions of their device recognition engines, and are hoping that publishers will recognize the opportunity that their particular approach to visual search can offer to the reading experience — bridging the physical book with online media.

Ricoh recently launched their first app to accompany the soon-to-be-released novel by Matt Stewart, The French Revolution (Soft Skull). The app, dubbed the “French Rev,” links pages in the book with web-based content including videos, recipes, and music. Geo location data alerts readers to mapped locations from events in the book (set in San Francisco) such as Coit Tower, Pier 39, and the Golden Gate Bridge.

http://toc.oreilly.com/french%20rev%202.jpg

The linked nature of the web seems to be finding its way into traditional printed text.  The linking of text in books to information about real life locations and web based information is something that I think people should really be keeping an eye on.  This is the kind of locative media coming to life that William Gibson wrote about in his novel Spook Country.  Very exciting stuff.

~3~

The Penguin Blog wrote about their reissue of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John le Carré as a Penguin Modern Classics.  The blog states:

First published 47 years ago, and being reissued today in Penguin Modern Classics, le Carré’s ‘Spy’ still has the power to make you uncomfortably aware of the mechanics operating in the pit of your stomach. His relentless, unflinching and unforgiving vision of the world reminded me of the moral wasteland that permeates McCarthy’s scalpathon ‘Blood Meridian’ and leaves you with an overwhelming sense that no matter how good the good guys are; the bad guys will always win.

I’ve never read anything by le Carre but this discription, and the beautiful cover art (seen below) of the reissue has made me want to give him a try ASAP.

This cover art is really amazing.  It is simple and has a very classic look to it.  As I was scanning (rather than reading) the blog, it was this cover art that drew my attention.

The very first four sentences of this book’s foreword (which is by Leo Laport) hooked me…

“From ants to anteaters, bees, to beekeeper, community is a fundamental part of our life on the planet. We thrive when we are immersed in it, suffer when deprived of it, and wherever humans go we create it. We define ourselves by our communities: tribe, family, work, clubs, schools, churches, andtemples, these are who we are. We are born into community, and if we’re lucky we’ll ed our days surrounded by it.”

I’ve been reading the hell out of this thing for almost an hour (the hour flew by due to how interesting the content is) and I can’t recommend this book enough.

If you’re interested you can of course buy the book from Amazon or O’Reilly, but (thanks to a Creative Commons license) you can also download a .PDF of the book for free.

If you think you could be interested, but you’re not sure, bounce over to The Art of Community’s own online community and poke around. I think doing so will convice you.

Sidenote 1:
Mashable recently posted a top ten books “must have books on social media” list, and The Art of Community was number two on that list.

Sidenote 2:
Whenever I buy an O’Reilly book I buy the eBook versions (rather than dead tree versions), because I have access to the book in ePub, .mobi, and PDF formats which can be downloaded at any time in perpetuity.

There are a great deals at the time of this writing: If you buy a O’Reilly eBook via the Stanza app you get it at a 40% discount. (coupon code STANZA).